Am I building something nobody wants, or am I just looking in the wrong places?

A few months ago I had an idea, validated it with a few people, and built it. Kept it simple on purpose. No feature creep, just the core problem.

Friends tested it, found some small bugs, fixed them. The app works.

Then I tried to find real users. Talked to people I thought were my audience but the conversations didn't go anywhere useful. Ran a small paid ad. Got almost nothing back.

Now I'm stuck. Not because the product is broken, but because I don't know where my people are. And without real users I have no feedback, and without feedback I don't know what to improve.

For those who've been through this: what actually worked to find your first real users? Not friends, not family. Strangers who genuinely needed what you built.